September 2016 Week 4 (again) Session 3

It's really Week 5 but as I've failed to achieve the goal of Session 3 in the Week 1 to Week 4 block I elected to try Week 4 again. There has been progress as I achieved 2:00min/100m pace on 9 out of 10 100m sets and with good pace consistency. In previous weeks it all collapsed after 5 sets but today it seemed fine until the 7th or 8th.

The initial sets were great, being around d 1:55min/100m and with only 20 strokes per length. Clearly I was applying power well.

My maximum stroke rate was 34spm in the final third of the session as I struggled, and managed, to maintain pace.

The pull buoy-less warmup lengths are easy to see as a distinct, slow cluster. Although the stroke rate is faster than in my easy lengths it's below that of my hard lengths. I wonder what my pace could be with anchor-legs at my maximal stroke rate? Perhaps I couldn't maintain it for more than a length?

The second question is whether I can achieve a sub-8 minute 400? Interval training is, of course, based on the premise that you can work harder for a number of brief periods than can be managed as a block. But what about 4 sets of 100m sequentially?